Bill Clinton
A Rhodes Scholar and Yale-trained lawyer who was governor of Arkansas for twelve years, and the first president born after the Second World War.
Biography
Clinton’s father died before he was born and he took his stepfather’s name as a teenager. He went to Georgetown on scholarships, worked for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spent two years at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and finished at Yale Law School, where he met Hillary Rodham.
He taught law in Fayetteville, was elected Arkansas attorney general in 1976 and governor in 1978 at thirty-two, lost re-election two years later, and won the office back in 1982 and held it for a decade. He won the presidency in 1992 in a three-way race and re-election in 1996.
His two terms covered the 1993 deficit-reduction act, NAFTA, the failure of his health-care plan, the 1994 midterms that gave Republicans the House for the first time in forty years, welfare reform, two government shutdowns, the Telecommunications Act, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, four consecutive federal budget surpluses at the end of the decade, and his impeachment by the House in 1998 and acquittal by the Senate in 1999.
Education
- Hot Springs High School, Arkansas, Graduated (1964)
- Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service, B.S. in international affairs (1968)
- University College, Oxford (1968–1970)
- Yale Law School, J.D. (1973)
Offices held before the presidency
- Attorney General of Arkansas, 1977–1979
- Governor of Arkansas, 1979–1981 and 1983–1992